ABSTRACT
Whilst this book is concerned with the Olympic Games, we consider it essential that the modern Olympics are understood in relation to other developments of their time. The early Olympic Games as a cultural form were closely linked to international or universal expositions (expos) or world’s fairs. Although they achieved some independence from 1912 onwards it was only in the post-Second World War television era that the Olympics were able to become a fully fledged stand-alone sports ‘mega-event’. This chapter traces that development, examining how the Olympic Games retained elements of its origins whilst it altered in relation to other significant political, economic and cultural processes. Historically the sport genre of mega-event can be seen as the cuckoo’s egg in the world’s fairs’ nest. Whilst world’s fairs drew and continue to draw many more people to their locations and last much longer temporally than an Olympic Games or football World Cup, they are nowhere near as highly mediated or as TV-dependent as sports mega-events. The Olympic Games, however, became the ‘world championship of world championships’ (Donnelly 1996: 35) and a mass-mediated global spectacle (as we have seen in Chapter 3). This potentially vast global audience is one of the major dimensions in any claims to be a mega-event.
